The Lake of the Sky eBook

I read under the pines of Lake Tahoe,
on that Sunday afternoon, some pages from a recent
English work that raises the question of inspiration.
Is the Bible the word of God, or the words of
men? It is neither. It is the word of God
breathed through the words of men, inextricably
intertwined with them as the tone of the wind
with the quality of the tree. We must go
to the Bible as to a grove of evergreens, not asking
for cold, clear truth, but for sacred influence, for
revival to the devout sentiment, for the breath
of the Holy Ghost, not as it wanders in pure space,
but as it sweeps through cedars and pines.

* * *
* *

In my Sunday musing by the shore of
our Lake, I raised the question,—­Who
were looking upon the waters of Tahoe when Jesus
walked by the beach of Gennesareth? Did men look
upon it then? And if so were they above the
savage level, and could they appreciate its beauty?
And before the time of Christ, before the date
of Adam, however far back we may be obliged to
place our ancestor, for what purpose was this luxuriance
of color, this pomp of garniture? How few
human eyes have yet rested upon it in calmness,
to drink in its loveliness! There are spots
near the point of the shore where the hotel stands,
to which not more than a few score intelligent
visitors have yet been introduced. Such a
nook I was taken to by a cultivated friend.
We sailed ten miles on the water to the mouth
of a mountain stream that pours foaming into its green
expanse. We left the boat, followed this stream
by its downward leaps through uninvaded nature
for more than a mile, and found that it flows
from a smaller lake, not more than three miles
in circuit, which lies directly at the base of two
tremendous peaks of the Sierra, white with immense
and perpetual snow-fields. The same ring
of vivid green, the same center of soft deep blue,
was visible in this smaller mountain bowl, and
it is fed by a glorious cataract, supported by those
snow-fields, which pours down in thundering foam, at
one point, in a leap of a hundred feet to die
in that brilliant color, guarded by those cold,
dumb crags.

Never since the creation has a particle
of that water turned a wheel, or fed a fountain
for human thirst, or served any form of mortal
use. Perhaps the eyes of not a hundred intelligent
spirits on the earth have yet looked upon that
scene. Has there been any waste of its wild
and lonely beauty? Has Tahoe been wasted
because so few appreciative souls have studied and
enjoyed it? If not a human glance had yet fallen
upon it, would its charms of color and surroundings
be wasted charms?